


Mudi

by HigherMagic



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Dreams and Nightmares, Extended Metaphors, Hellhounds, M/M, Psychological Horror, Someone Help Will Graham, Tags Are Hard, Will is a Mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-28 13:59:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16724733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HigherMagic/pseuds/HigherMagic
Summary: They never tell you what to do when the shadows come at you. In the movies, the camera cuts away in time to see there was nothing there but what if it's still there? And you turn and you look and expect to see it gone and the monster runs at you instead?





	Mudi

**Author's Note:**

> The Mudi is a herding dog breed from Hungary. Today, the Mudi is bred for work, sport, companionship, and show. They continue to be used in herding, as well as participating in a variety of dog sports. *the more you know*
> 
> I spent most of today (today being friday and now it's saturday for me lmao) sleeping and having some...issues. Combined with a lot of weird fever dreams that turned into this and only really became coherent after I actually finished it? So I had to rewrite it and it's just...it's weird. I cannot stress to you how weird it is. But I was trying a different writing style and I think in terms of *style* I did a pretty good job it's just, the rest of it is a mess lmao.
> 
> Anyway, have fun!

Focus.

There's someone under his bed and someone above his head. He closes his eyes, breathes in, breathes out, listens for an inhale that doesn't match his. When he opens his eyes, the face is closer.

Focus focus _it's okay_ fuckin -.

There are hands on his shoulders. One hand – two hands. Three, one on his face. A blanket, scratching the back of his neck. His jaw clenches, chin lifts, lowers, lifts again. A nod? Someone's asking him questions but it doesn't matter because there are hands on his shoulders and hands on his face and a light, a light – and then around his neck and he snaps his jaws together and -.

"Give him some space."

Blood.

The world rights itself, turns back fourteen degrees. His haunches tense and cramp.

"They never tell you what to do when the shadows come at you."

"Will?"

There are dogs snarling. He is snarling.

"When they stay still, that's fine. It's fine. But what happens when they don't?"

Hand on his shoulder. Hand on the nape of his neck. Hand on his face.

"Will, look at me."

Brown, and red. Dark, dark – _focus_. Teeth. He leans forward and touches those teeth, but they're soft beneath his, no, that's his finger. His hand is soft. His hand is wet and colored in red and those sharp teeth show their corners and the cages of lips turns down and he wonders if the tongue is trying to break out and slam itself against the barriers of those teeth.

"Doctor Lecter." A new voice. A woman in black.

"The shadows didn't stay still," he says.

There's a hand on his neck, fingers to pulse, a red stain on the outside of a cage and he blinks, and there's a man outside the cage, a man inside the cage, a man in the mirror behind the bars outside the cage.

 _Focus_.

The world is low, and then it is high, and the snarling stops.

There's a woman in the reflection beside the man outside the cage inside the mirror behind the bars. She's red and white and black, there's a motif somewhere there, and she's severe and soft as snow half-melted, treacherous as black ice, a concave bow of law and order.

"Do you know why you're here?" she asks the man inside the cage.

He laughs and laughs because the shadows are moving. They will come for her with bared teeth.

The cage is white and the walls are white and she is red and he is brown. No, he is black. There are hands on his shoulders and hands around his neck and a hand covering his eyes and there's a man inside the cage standing above him and the man is smiling. He smiles back because the man is blue – blue and green and wasted away like a drowned and rusting boat.

"He's been trapped there for months."

In a cage, in a cage, just like a dog in a cage.

"He's lost his Goddamn mind. What's left of it, anyway."

"Be quiet, Zeller."

The walls are grey and green and he sits on metal and it's cold and he misses soft moss, misses rotting wood, misses the give and burst of rats in pipes and bugs in the wall and thinks, thinks, that there are no shadows in this room and that is strange because everything has shadows. They jut ahead and they jut behind and that's why they always win because there are more of them.

The man of blue stands in the mirror and grins at him, and at his side is a black dog with a wagging tail.

The door opens, the man in brown no longer has red on his lips and he looks at his hands and they are large hands, held limp at his sides like corpses of birds that have stopped twitching. He comes forward, he sits, and the chair is metal and it's cold and he wonders if the brown man wants to sit on the floor.

He scratches his face. Scratches until a scab of dirt gives and he starts to turn red.

"Will," the man says, his voice soft and soft and soft. _Focus_. "Do you know where you are?"

He licks his lips and tastes the red. Tastes white, and clear – water. "I'm thirsty," he says.

The man nods. "I can get you something to drink, if you'd like."

There is movement. The man in blue in the mirror moves and disappears out the side of it and he watches because he didn’t think mirrors could do that. The man had been too real – the shadows are moving and;

"There's two of them for every one of us," he says.

The man in brown tilts his head and there's a flare of yellow around his neck, a tie, a collar – canary. Will he sing when the air gets too thick? He scrapes his chair on heels and toes and flattens fingers on the table and leans in.

"Where have you been?" he whispers.

The man blinks. Brown and red, black and white. _Focus_. "Were you expecting me?"

He laughs.

"Do you know who I am?"

His head tilts. "Of course I do," he replies, snorting.

At that, the man smiles, shows the bars of his teeth and the tip of his tongue, leaning through to get a taste of fresh air before he presses his lips together and swallows. The door opens and a man comes in with a glass of water and it's cold and he takes it and drinks it all down. There's a smear of pink on the glass, intricately marked with maze-tunnel prints, channels through the condensation. His throat burns and his chest clenches and he rocks to the heels of the chair and can't go any further because his wrists are chained to the table.

"This is my job."

He frowns, and tugs. He looks up and there is no man in brown and no man in blue and there are shadows, too many shadows, and one of them looks like a woman and she is red and white and black and severe and soft.

She smiles at him, and he laughs right in her face.

There are shadows and there are stars. Beautiful stars, that giggle and dance for him as he watches them. At his right stands a demon, his left, an angel, and he turns around to look at them both. The angel's eyes are white, the demon's gold, and the angel is screaming and screaming and she only goes silent when he touches her cheeks.

"Hush," he tells her, and the demon snarls and stares. He touches the demon as well, equal with his adoration and his affection, and he turns up to the stars again and sighs but then the walls are white and the ceiling is white and his hands are just touching his sides, wrapped around his front, bound behind his back.

He jerks, scrambles into a corner and stares, for there is a monster in the corner and it snarls at him, limbs like a spider that jut up and fall back down again and it spreads out, takes up every inch of space and the walls are white until they are not white, the monster oozes dust and black mold and he can't breathe he can't breathe he can't -.

There are hands on his shoulders and red and blue lights around him and he ducks his head, shields his eyes. His forehead finds warm clothing, a tender touch and the gentle slope of thigh and stomach and he folds, collapses as a house of cards and presses his face into a hip. The suit is brown, a hand gentle in his hair.

He whines and aches on the inside. "They never tell you what to do when the shadows come at you."

A hum, curious and concerned. "Will?"

In the movies. When there are ghost and shadows. They just stand there and scare you and the camera cuts away in time to see there was nothing there but, "What if it's still there? And you turn and you look for the shadow and the monster runs at you instead?"

"Forgive me, Will, I don't understand."

There is someone under his bed and someone above his bed. There is a demon and an angel and he'll tear their throats out with his teeth.

Fight or flight. Freeze. _Focus._

"He's not finished with you. He let you go for a reason."

He knows. He nods. He rocks on his chair and pulls his heels up but they can't stay up because the chair is too small and it's cold and he wants to sit on the floor but his hands are cuffed so he can't move them and the woman in red is dressed in green now and it hurts his eyes to look at her.

"There's a man in the mirror," he whispers, lifting his eyes. "He comes to me in my dreams."

"Will."

She is crying.

The demon has fierce teeth and they bite at his shoulders and bite at his neck and he growls, hands and knees, head bowed, thighs spread. The demon is mighty, fierce, claw-handed and takes what it wants and what it wants is him and he wants it, too. The monsters never show up when the demon is around – they are afraid of the master in a way he is not. The demon's tongue is unsheathed, licks at his neck, licks at his ear, one hand around the front of his throat and he winces because the demon is many things but it is not gentle.

There is red on the ground, between his knees, when it's done. Slick on his palms where there are claws instead of fingers.

The demon disappears with a snap of teeth and then the shadow is there and she's the woman in red and she's screaming with white eyes and too-long mouth. She has no teeth, she has no clothes, she stands like a wraith of a thing and screams and reaches for him and he jolts back, limbs heavy, too bloodied to stand.

The Earth is low, fourteen degrees off.

She comes for him, crawls over him like a spider and then her eyes, her white eyes, are inches from his and her mouth hangs slack, lower lip dipping from gravity like an overstretched piece of silly putty and he grimaces, feeling the slick darkness of her wrap around his jaw in a macabre suck-kiss.

She crouches atop him and it's not his love, this isn't right, and he moans because she's warm, and she's wet, and she swallows him, swallows him, and by the time she's done he's not bleeding anymore.

"You can't outrun a shadow. They're sewn to your feet, to your hands. They move because where there is light is, there you are, there they are, and there are more of them than there are of you and you cast two shadows at once, sometimes."

There is someone below his bed and when he turns to look, he sees a hand. He snarls, and it retreats like it's afraid.

"You're alive, you're _alive_ , you're -."

He knows this room, he's been in this room. He looks down. There's a black box-bracelet sitting just above his ankle. He tugs at it, paws, tries to get it with his teeth. His clothes are orange – prison clothes. The walls have books on them, in them, knowledge imprinted for years and years.

"How did you get here, Will?"

The man in brown is wearing red today. He shudders and doesn't speak.

"I escaped," he says.

"The hospital, or the house?"

The house, the house, "The hospital." The house at the end of the street in the middle of the woods at the top of a mountain. The man in the reflection of the cage behind the bars outside the cage is smiling and he smiles back. His knuckles crack when he flexes his fingers.

There are hands on his shoulders, hands around his throat, choking, shaking him.

"Stay with me, Will. Stay with me."

His lashes flutter and he shakes his head because his demon is perched on top of his shoulders and on top of the demon is the angel and on top of her is the woman in red, and he is a totem pole of fever dreams and nightmares and he can't hold their weight forever.

He sags, and they go tumbling like a house of cards.

The girl is impaled on the antlers and the head is perched _just_ so in the grass. She is barren and brazenly spread, insulting, gift-wrapped and he wants to eat her alive but she's not alive anymore but if he touches her, she will twitch and she will gasp and she will cry. The shadow of her looks like a demon trapped in a spiderweb.

The walls are white and the ceiling is white but the floor is black and slick with mold. There is blood on his knees, blood in his mouth and he gathers and spits and pushes his forehead to his palms and wishes it would split open because there are shadows behind him and they're not staying where they should be.

"He's got three cracked ribs, a broken femur, and we only just fixed the internal bleeding. He's soup inside, Agent Crawford."

"He's the only witness."

"Jack, I believe he would benefit from being sedated a while longer. You saw how…out of sorts he was when we first collected him. Let him rest."

"Fine. I'll come back in twelve hours. Make sure he's awake."

The flowers smell like a woman, perfume undeniably feminine. He pushes his face to them and inhales and chokes on flesh. Opens his eyes and sees an angel, staring at him, tensed and trembling. He smiles, and tucks her hair behind her ear and kisses her forehead.

"Sleep," he says, and leaves.

"I can't sleep," she replies, echoing.

He lifts one shoulder. "Then fling yourself off the roof."

The demon is mangled, the demon is dead. His horns have been split from his head, his eyes no longer glowing and golden, and he touches his cheeks and, after a moment, spits onto his face. He knows the taste of blood.

His hands are clawed and he watches as the demon's skin clears where the rain hits, revealing flesh, and his fingers flex and there's blood on his hands and he throws his head back and laughs at the storm.

"I followed them like breadcrumbs. No one can hide from me forever."

The man in brown is always there when he wakes up. Always there when he goes to sleep. He reaches out and touches and tugs on the canary-collar of his tie and smiles when he gets negative attention for it. "Are they dead?" he whispers.

The man in brown shakes his head. "Not quite," he replies, and there are hands at his throat and he frowns and doesn't want to believe that. "Because of the way his head hit the courtyard, his skull was smashed into three pieces and the hole created allowed the brain to swell. He cannot walk and can barely speak, but he is alive."

He swallows, and asks, "The angel?"

"She drowned."

"So she is dead."

"She was resuscitated."

He frowns. "But I was there for years." Alone, alone.

"Were you?"

The passage of time is fluid and it is not linear. All the particles circle each other like a glass of water – sometimes, they are utterly upended and spill out into a cosmic chaos of events and timelines. "I escaped," he says.

"Did you?"

There is a rope and there is a noose and there are no survivors this time. He kills and consumes the angel and tears the demon limb from limb and buries each piece in a different grave and when he's standing on the balcony, looking out, there is a big black dog sitting below him and looking up and it looks impatient.

The man in blue and the man in brown are there, and they wave when he looks at them like indulgent parents watching over their child.

These separations and shadows and repeat offenders are Hell but this is Purgatory and he isn't religious. He steps back and un-nooses himself because that won't solve anything. He lights a fire in the hearth and throws wood and blankets and curtains on it until it covers the whole house and he walks out of the smoke unable to see and unable to breathe -.

There are hands on his shoulders and a blanket, itchy, pressed to the back of his neck, and Will sucks in a gasp and breathes.

" _Fuck_."

"Will."

A hand on his face, lifting his chin, and Will meets eyes that are brown and red and his teeth are a cage and there's a smear of blood in the corner of his mouth like someone threw a punch. Will threw a punch. He smiles and sees the reflection of his teeth in the man in brown's eyes.

"I _escaped_ ," he hisses.

The man in brown smiles. "I let you go."

A hand squeezes the nape of his neck and he shivers and goes still and submits with an obedient whine.

The woman in red is crying and he's rocking on his heels and he's tied to a dolly and his hands are bound to his sides and there's a mask on his face. He can't breathe but he can stare and he does stare because there's nothing else to do.

"You killed two people, Will," she says. "They denied your insanity plea."

He lifts his shoulder. He doesn't get the luxury of dying, not today. Not any day.

"No one tells you what to do when the shadows come after you and one man casts two shadows at any one time, did you know that?"

"What does that _mean_?" she demands.

He smiles, and sighs, and shakes his head. Closes his eyes and focuses. Better luck next time.

"I'd like to speak to Doctor Lecter."

"Last night on Earth. Most people ask for a priest."

The spider covers the ceiling and each eye is the angel's face, white-eyed and rotating and constantly screaming and he tilts his head, watching, counting. He never sees teeth, never. There's a bruise on his jaw that aches tenderly and he touches it, grits his teeth, and shoves his temple into the wall so that he goes to sleep.

There is a bruise on the man in brown's forehead when he visits and they exchange smiles.

"They give you the needle tomorrow."

"Us."

"A pity. I was just starting to get comfortable in this one."

There is a man in the cage and a man in the reflection on the outside of the bars.

"You certainly had the easier ride."

Another smile. A flash of golden eyes. "I'm sorry I made you jealous, baby," he purrs, and the walls are white and the cage is clear and his hand presses. They call him Will in this life. Across the glass, another hand mimics him. They call him Hannibal. "I like the way it smells."

"I know, darling," comes the reply. "I suppose it's only fair, for how I treated you the last time around."

Nose to the ground, tail wagging, he hunts.

He smiles, and thinks of that pretty angel. Like every angel, she had fallen, screaming as she went. And the woman in black enters the room and rolls her eyes at the sight of them, arms folded across her chest. "You two are hopeless," she mutters.

They call her Alana, in this life, and she has an angel of her own.

"You need to keep his leash tighter, Hannibal." She looks at him and purses her lips. "You ready to try again?" she asks.

He nods, and smiles. The objective is always clear; don't get caught. Playing cat and mouse is always fun, especially for dogs, and the walls are black and the ceiling is black and wait, wait -.

"Will."

Will freezes, turns over his shoulder. There are flames at his back. He looks down at his hands and sees them covered in blood. There are red and blue lights and inside the house is the carcass of a monster, a spider, a woman with a too-wide mouth and white eyes.

He looks up and meets Hannibal's gaze, and every inch of him screams with concern and Hannibal is never concerned, never looks like that except when he's looking at Will, it seems, and Will's dogs are running around at all the excitement and commotion.

Will licks his lips and says, "It was self-defense."

Hannibal nods, and there are hands around his shoulders and a blanket at the back of his neck and Will smears blood on Hannibal's cheek, corner of mouth to jaw, and shakes his head as he's led to sit in the back of an ambulance. His knuckles are split and bleeding, his body aches.

"I saw his shadow," he says.

Hannibal nods again, and tilts Will's face up and checks his pupils, his pulse, his temperature.

There's a man in the reflection in Hannibal's eyes and there's a monster behind him and Will doesn't know which one he's supposed to be. He wraps his fingers in a tie the color of sunsets and pulls until lips meet, teeth connect, and Hannibal growls against him but does not pull back.

"I know it was you," Will says.

Hannibal smiles. "Prove it."

Fight or flight. Focus. _Freeze_.

"I'm going to eat you alive."

The spider is back and its body eats the white walls, eats the black floor, molds anew into Will's mind and soaks everything in gasoline. There's a hand sticking out from beneath his bed and when he reaches for it it's his own shadow. He fled, but he did not escape, and he wakes up in a bed too-soft and warm and there's an arm around his chest and a man at his back and there's blood between his legs and Will thinks it smells like a woman. He turns and kisses and feels ash beneath his hands, a pulse, a snarl.

"Are you going to try to kill me, Will?"

"Stop." Stop asking. Stop insisting. _Stop looking at me like that when you think about it_. Will kisses and claws and covers his mouth so he doesn't scream when Hannibal fucks him.

She has a broken neck and she's swinging to and fro from the uppermost parapet. He tilts his head and watches her like the back and forth of an old grandfather clock. There's a tug at his sleeve and he smiles, rolls his shoulders, and walks on.

The man's blood is slick in the courtyard, his eyes wide and staring upwards and showing him the monster and the demon in his white eyes. He sighs. "Did we have to come here?"

"You left us little choice."

There is a house at the end of the street in the middle of the woods at the top of a mountain. The insides are a shell of ash and mold and broken, forgotten things. It is here, steaming gently and soaked with seawater, that they go. Here they make their nest as crows make nests in the attics of torture chambers.

They dig two graves and fill them. They plant flowers.

There are spiders in the attic and he can't go in. There are snow angels in the ash and he sleeps in them instead of their bed.

The walls are grey and green and the ceiling is black and the death-drug is cold in his arm. He closes his eyes and sleeps in ash. He opens them and finds the world white and he is in the house at the end of the street in the middle of the woods at the top of a mountain.

Hannibal emerges, smiling, dressed in a white shirt, brownish sweater and black slacks like a funeral director on casual Friday and Will pushes himself upright, in an orange jumpsuit, and swipes his hand through his hair.

Hannibal offers him wine and he takes it, sighing. "How long did we get that time?" he asks. Those are the rules. They're not allowed to know how long they were down there. Too much potential for the timeline to shift.

Hannibal sighs through his nose, sips his wine, and stares out. "I don't know," he replies, because of course he doesn't. He wraps an arm around Will's waist and slides his hand into Will's pocket, cupping his thigh in a gentle and warm hand. Though they are in the mountains, their view is of the sea and, no longer split between the world of the living and the dead, the house begins to rebuild itself to their liking.

Unfit for Heaven, and certainly too powerful for Hell, they cycle through their lives in a place like this. It's an arrangement. A neat one.

"Can we stay here a while?" Will asks, sipping his wine. He turns his head and sees Hannibal smile.

Hannibal turns, and kisses him, lingering and long. He pulls back with a grin. He takes his hand from Will's pocket and laces their fingers together, and brings Will's knuckles to his lips. Will rolls his eyes at the mischievous glint in Hannibal's. Brown and red.

"Of course, darling," Hannibal purrs, and clinks their glasses together. Will smiles, and tugs him close for another kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> I promise it used to be worse lol. If I missed anything tag-wise that should be added please let me know!
> 
> See you guys in the next project! <3


End file.
